The Question of Moral Standing or Intrinsic Value and the Anthropocentric Answer

Which beings have moral standing, that is, are morally important in their own right and why?

Which beings are intrinsically valuable (i.e., are valuable in a way that transcends their utility to other beings)?

People are paradigm cases of beings who are morally important in their own right and whose value is not reducible to their
usefulness to others.

Utilitarian artifacts (pieces of chalk) are paradigm examples of beings without moral standing or intrinsic value; they have purely
instrumental value (i.e., use value for others).

Moral agents (beings who are morally responsible for their behavior) have direct duties to all beings with moral standing. Beings
lacking moral standing cannot have duties owed to them, but there may be indirect duties pertaining to them.

Strong anthropocentrism: All and only humans have moral standing or intrinsic value. (This is what we will mean by the
phrase and is Aquinas', Kant's and Baxter's view ("I have no interest in preserving penguins for their own sake; penguins are important
because people enjoy seeing them walk on rocks.")

Nonhumans are mere instruments to human benefit; a mere means to human ends. Earth as a human resource.

We have no duties to nonhumans, but only duties to other humans pertaining to nonhumans.

Can have a strong env. ethic: Important to protect the environment for the sake of people (not for its own sake)

Weak anthropocentrism: Literally 'anthropocentrism' suggests that morality should be centered on humans and that
nonhumans are of peripheral moral concern.

On this view, humans are at the center of moral concern; humans are superior; humans matter more than other beings. (This suggests
that nonhumans intrinsically matter some, and thus weak anthropocentrism is not compatible with strong anthropocentrism for it
claims only humans matter).

Weak anthropocentrists need to work out answers to these questions:: Is the claim that any individual human is more important than
any individual nonhuman? That any human interest (no matter how trivial) is more important than any nonhuman interest? That the
human species as a whole is more important than all of the millions of other species on earth combined? That one individual human is
more important than an entire species of nonhumans?

Strengths of (and arguments for) Anthropocentrism

Anthropocentric arguments needn't be selfish or shallow.

Worrying about lead poisoning because it kills black children disproportionately--a problem of environmental justice--is human-centered but not selfish or shallow.

Anthropocentric reasons are clearly good reasons for protecting nature; what is controversial is the view that they are the only good
reasons. Why not argue for env. protection using both nonanthropocentric and anthropocentric reasons?

How strong these environmental policies will be depends on (1) how closely human and nonhuman welfare is tied and (2) to what
extent humans can modify natural systems while insuring that they continue to provide life-support for human

More Problems for Anthropocentrism

Arguments for restricting moral concern to humans are not persuasive.

Being human as a criterion of moral standing is no longer useful or self-evident as it once appeared to be

The argument that: Only humans are moral agentsand therefore only humans have moral standing ignores the distinction
between moral agent and being with moral standing ( beings that owe duties to others and beings to whom those duties are owed.

Rationales that include only humans in the moral arena, also exclude some humans and this is implausible.

Arguments for nonanthropocentric moral concerns are persuasive

Last person arguments (Wrong for the last human to destroy the planet, and thus nonhumans must matter morally.)

Seeing the "higher" animals as mere resources is an obvious mistake (dumping toxic chemicals on penguins wrongs the penguins
themselves and not merely animal lovers)

Anthropocentrism as a parochial, narrow-minded, submoral approach to the earth that is largely responsible for the
environmental predicament (Ehrenfeld) ; A kind of species egoism and species selfishness: The nonhuman world is one giant
resource for us.